There is a particular feeling to being sold out that, like most traumas, is a terrible sum of its painful parts. In some ways it's like death. You find out about it, don't believe it, rage against it, go numb, and so on in whatever order that's supposed to happen. None of that really helps or addresses the stone cold fact of it though. Those stages are more aftershocks of the inital rocking of your world.
Naturally, being sold out requires trust. Unless you are a fool, which of course won't save or excuse you, trust requires intimacy. Typically intimacy involves a great deal of time and communication. So the basic tally includes (but is not limited to) trust, intimacy, time, and communication.
When that magic moment of realization occurs and you realize that you have just been spent, the first thing to go is intimacy, and it is torn from you by the mere fact of becoming aware it no longer exists. It's like that dream where you go to work naked but don't realize it until you're there and someone points it out. Only it's not a dream, and it's a kind, soft, safe spot in your heart that's missing.
Trust dies a lot harder. It lives in your head and only visits its wilder cousin, instinct, on holiday. Like most things that live and breathe thought, trust is much slower and more inflexible about embracing reality. Trust is what makes you think of innumerable reasons that what just happened didn't actually happen. Only it did, and the contortions you go through avoiding that fact merely schedule the agonizing into a long and brutal payment plan.
Eventually, when you're back in the saddle again and you've come to grips with your situation, you run an audit. That's where you get to edit a movie called, "Me and That Cold Bitch Who Sold Me Out" which is composed of all the time and communication you've got in your memories. This takes a while but when it's done, you'll find out whether or not it's a film with a sequel, or if everything but the credits is on the cutting-room floor. Either way, you're going to be spending a nice chunk of time exploring yourself and how you live, proctology style.
When the storm passes and you've done your time and gotten your distance, an idle sort of question will come up. It's an unintentional afterthought, like the taste of a belch.
What was I worth?
It's beautiful out today. I have my double mocha cooling down in the niche of discarded Riccola wrappers on my desk. "Judging Amy" is on the TV, it's that time, playing an episode with the guy from Smallville as Amy's boyfriend. Well, ex-boyfriend as of this writing. Ex-boyfriend.
The laundry in my bathroom has reached critical mass. Much like my facial hair, it's a living environmental marker of my condition. How many dishes are in the sink, unwashed? How many bags of garbage wait to be taken out? Can I see my end table? I'm not worried. The laundry is the only thing that really needs doing and then I'll get rid of the whiskers and I'll be done. Rid of it and be done.
There was a new drifter outside Brewed Awakening this morning. Younger than me asking for change "for coffee". I would have given it to him if he'd asked it for soap. I gave him the usual, "not today," and moved on. The lady at Nefeli thanked me for my tip on using steam to warm her house, apparently it somewhat worked. The new season of students are here in the usual numbers, which made returning to my dark apartment feel even emptier. Even Emptier than usual.
It's a beautiful day. One of the better ones, at least.
Aspiration, desperation, attempt, contempt, contentment, containment, freedom, forced, fragile, fundamental, resistance, consistance, communication, community, commentary, contraction, contradiction, confusion, condemnation, relief, respite, restoration, regurgitation, purges, persistance, transformation, reformation, rebuilding, reinforcing, rage, rapine, roaring, restraint, control, measure, balance, harmony. Horror.
I'm expendable, bitch.
I've been scanning my logs to check how well the comment-spam filter is working (answer: really well), and I come across this name, Kathy Gelpi, who if I remember right was a girl I knew back in high school. Apparently she searched for 'email' and tried to leave a comment, but the comment was defaulted to 'moderated' ... I think because there was no content. I did a quick check and she's connecting from AOL.
1. I need to put up my email address so it's easier to write me
2. If it was the Kathy I knew from high school - get in touch with me! I tried a few times in the past to find you and met with failure. That's saying something. If it wasn't you... oh well.
3. The spam filters are kicking ass. So far they are perfect.